


steadfast presence

by birdring (twoif)



Category: League of Legends RPF
Genre: Law School AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-09-03 02:59:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16754755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twoif/pseuds/birdring
Summary: "You have nothing to apologize for," Seohaeng insisted. "We both could have done more. It was both our faults."Beomhyun laughed, shakily. "You say that in past tense. Think we're gonna die here?""What?""You said, 'we both could have done more.' Like this is the end."





	steadfast presence

**Author's Note:**

> gorilla/kuro + law school + 24 hours to live

In the end, they decided to barricade the door of the study room. There were no windows, so it was the only way in or out. 

"What are we going to do when we need to pee?" Seohaeng complained for the tenth time. 

"What's more important, peeing or getting your brains eaten out?" Beomhyun reminded him, but with a fray in his voice, like Seohaeng was finally beginning to wear on him. 

"Given that we only have two granola bars, a bottle of water, half an iced coffee, and, uh..." Seohaeng rummaged again in Beomhyun's backpack. "A packet of gum. We'd probably resort to eating each other's brains soon enough." 

Beomhyun gave him an absentminded smile from where he was testing the resistance of his chair against the doorknob. "Well, I'd rather it be you than some classmates of mine."

They lapsed into silence, Beomhyun sitting on the floor with his face turned to one side so he could press his ear against the wood. It had been quiet outside for a while now. When they'd first gotten the alerts on the phone, they'd debated leaving the library, but were dissuaded by the distant sounds of intermittent screaming and a herd of running footsteps that passed disconcertingly without a single human voice. They'd spent the last half hour calling, but the reception, Beomhyun noted apologetically, had always been bad in the law library. Beomhyun was in a groupchat with some of his sectionmates, but most of them were also holed up in various study rooms and buildings across campus and were just as confused. In the end they'd resorted to checking the trending topics on Twitter, which weren't much help. It was too hard to tell the memes apart from the real updates. 

"I still can't believe this is happening," Seohaeng said. He was sitting in the other remaining chair, watching a news clip on Beomhyun's laptop with the sound off. In the picture-within-a picture next to the anchorwoman's face, he could see grainy footage of the campus, completely empty, but with an ominous rusty smudge in the lower left corner. He knew, intellectually, that could be anything, leftover mud from last night's storm, even. Still, his stomach churned. The chyron on the bottom flashed, _GOVERNMENT CONSIDERING QUARANTINE UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, TWO CONFIRMED DEAD SO FAR._

"Do you think it's really—?" Seohaeng frowned, confused, and Beomhyun continued with an embarrassed half-grin, "Zombies. Do you really think it's zombies?"

"What else? They're saying it could be a biochemical weapon explosion but then, that girl—"

They both shuddered. It'd been the first real news story that had made it out. Seohaeng could see still the expression on her dead face. 

"It just doesn't seem real," Beomhyun continued. 

"Yeah. Like a video game."

"If only. Then we'd have guns."

"You're bad with shooters," Seohaeng joked. "Jongin always kicked your butt in PUBG."

Beomhyun snorted indignantly. "I wasn't trying. I'd play better if my life—"

He stopped, sobering, and patted off his jeans as he got up from the ground. Overhead, the lights of the study room momentarily dimmed and then recovered, but that wasn't a sign of anything but faulty wiring. They'd been doing that all afternoon, even before the news broke out. One of their phones on the table buzzed, and Seohaeng glanced at it: another undelivered message. The library was a cement block, literally. _That's why it's a good place to study_ , Beomhyun had told him this morning. It felt like a lifetime ago. 

"Sorry your vacation turned out this way," Beomhyun said. 

Seohaeng shrugged. "The alternative, apparently, was spending the weekend watching you study." He winced as soon as he registered the words leaving his mouth. "That's not what I meant."

"No, it is. It's fine." Beomhyun stood at the table awkwardly, thumbing through his textbook with little aborted flicks of his thumb, like he was continuously reminding himself that now wasn't the time to worry about his finals. "I know I've been no fun since I started school."

"You've been busy. I get it. It's law school."

Beomhyun gave him another one of his absent smiles, looking in Seohaeng's direction and not quite meeting his eyes. "Jongin spilled the beans, you know. He said you asked him for restaurant recommendations. While you were here, I mean. That's kind of you."

Seohaeng bit his lip, irrationally mad at Jongin for ruining it. He wondered if Jongin had told him the other half of it too, that he'd asked for some place not too romantic. Jongin had teased him at the time, _you know that no one here cares if you're into dudes or Beomhyun_ , but the truth was that he'd made the trip to break up with Beomhyun and he didn't know how it would go over. He'd thought, maybe some place public, to keep them both from crying. Nothing too romantic, because he didn't want to spoil romance for Beomhyun. 

It was a dick move, he knew it, but the alternative was break up over the phone or a video call, which would have been worse, for different reasons. Probably. That's what he told himself, anyway. Kyungho had agreed, but also Kyungho had never dated a man and his longest relationship lasted two months, so maybe Seohaeng shouldn't have been asking him relationship advice in the first place. 

"It's not a big deal," Seohaeng said hurriedly. "I just thought, you know, you have a lot on your mind, with your tests and everything." 

"I should have made more of an effort, especially since we hadn't seen each other for a while. I told you I would when I—"

"You have nothing to apologize for," Seohaeng insisted. "We both could have done more. It was both our faults."

Beomhyun laughed shakily. "You say that in past tense. Think we're gonna die here?" 

"What?"

"You said, 'we both could have done more.' Like this is the end."

 _It is_ , Seohaeng thought, _at least for us_. His mouth tried to form around the words, but they felt all wrong, pointy and bitter and cruel. The silence stretched out between them. Seohaeng, always the more cowardly of the two of them, traced the grains of the tabletop with his eyes, pulse racing as he tried to figure out what to say. 

"Seohaeng," Beomhyun breathed after a beat. "Is something wrong?"

The worst thing about Beomhyun had always been his capacity for tenderness. The second worst thing was that he knew Seohaeng too well. Seohaeng felt his heart seize up, and he looked up involuntarily. Beomhyun met his gaze, then went very still, eyes widening, and Seohaeng swallowed, feeling sick in the back of his throat. There was no helping it. He knew that Beomhyun could see it in his face. He was never very good at hiding things from Beomhyun, even when he wanted to.

He licked his lips. "This isn't the best time to tell you this, but—"

Beomhyun turned away abruptly, cutting him off. "I need to use the restroom," he said, his voice small and tight, like it was being squeezed out of a tube of toothpaste. 

"What?"

"Pee," Beomhyun said.

It was comical, and comically stupid. Seohaeng tried not to laugh, because Beomhyun didn't look like he was telling a joke. "You can't. That was the—the whole point of the chair. You said—" 

"There's nothing out there." Beomhyun was moving determinedly towards the door now, loosening the chair from where it had been wedged. "I'll be fine."

"Beomhyun—"

The chair jerked free with a screech that sounded disturbingly human. They both jumped, but Beomhyun recovered first, neatly lining the chair up with the wall, his hand on the doorknob. Seohaeng couldn't see his face at all, and it felt like a punishment, a punch to his gut. 

"I'll be right back. Put the chair back when I'm out there, okay?"

He was gone before Seohaeng managed to snap himself out of it and rush to the door to keep him from leaving. Seohaeng caught a slice of the hallway before the door closed. There was nothing out there, just an empty stretch of carpet. He couldn't hear Beomhyun's footsteps leaving, but on the bright side, no screaming either. He noticed, numbly, that Beomhyun had at least managed to take his phone with him. So there was that, at least. If Beomhyun was attacked, he'd have a way of telling someone. Maybe even Seohaeng. 

He'd practiced how to break up with Beomhyun on the days leading up to this visit, even memorized a little speech on the plane over. He was going to tell Beomhyun how they had so much time in their life to find the right person, and maybe they'd just clung onto the one thing they both knew because they were afraid of change. How they could build off of this relationship, how they had the rest of their lives to stay friends. So stupid now. He felt his eyes sting as he maneuvered the chair back under the doorknob, What kind of love was it, that he didn't want to spend the rest of his life with Beomhyun, but there was no one else in the world he'd rather die with than Beomhyun? 

He was the monster, he thought crazily, the one who ripped Beomhyun open. Maybe it was better this way, a door between them now. No way in and no way out. He waited, one hand on the doorknob, straining against the dark outside. Waiting for Beomhyun to come back.

**Author's Note:**

> SURPRISE, THE 24 HOURS TO LIVE REFERS TO THEIR RELATIONSHIP


End file.
